U.S. acceptance of the Qatari jet has intensified scrutiny over potential violations of U.S. Constitution.

WASHINGTON, May 22 (Xinhua) -- The Pentagon announced Wednesday that the United States has accepted a Boeing 747 aircraft as a gift from Qatar, with plans to quickly modify the jet to serve as the next Air Force One to transport President Donald Trump.

The acceptance of the Qatari jet has intensified scrutiny over potential violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, with Democrats accusing Trump of exploiting his office for personal gain while he defends the gift as a cost-saving measure for taxpayers.

ACCEPTANCE OF GIFT

"The secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations," Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement.

"The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the President of the United States," he said.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the start of planning to update the jet to meet needed standards and acknowledged that the plane will require "significant" modifications.

The Air Force is preparing to award a contract to begin the enormous modifications necessary to transform a Boeing 747 aircraft from Qatar into a platform usable for U.S. executive airlift, according to a service spokesperson.

The Qatari plane, flight records show, has been in San Antonio, a city in the U.S. state of Texas, since early last month at an airplane maintenance facility, The New York Times reported.

Trump administration officials have said they are considering hiring L3Harris, a military contractor, to handle the retrofit, but no formal contract has been disclosed publicly, said the report.

The U.S. Congress, required by the Constitution to sign off on any large gift to the president, has not yet taken any formal vote to accept the plane as a gift from Qatar. However, Trump has argued that the plane is a gift to the U.S. government rather than to him as president.

"They are giving the United States Air Force a jet ... not to me, to the United States Air Force, so they could help us out," Trump said, when asked about the move Wednesday while he was meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Ramaphosa, in response, said, "I'm sorry I don't have a plane to give you."

"If your country was offering the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it," Trump said.

BIPARTISAN CONTROVERSY

The gift has raised bipartisan controversy, which has escalated into a constitutional and political battle, with Democrats accusing Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution while he defends the move as a cost-saving measure for taxpayers.

"This unprecedented action is a stain on the office of the presidency and cannot go unanswered," said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, adding that the deal "apparently includes a corrupt plot for Donald Trump to keep the plane at his library after leaving office."

Schumer has tried in vain to introduce legislation that would prohibit any foreign aircraft from being used as Air Force One and forbid the use of taxpayer money to modify or restore the aircraft.

Several Democrats have also submitted a resolution in the House of Representatives calling on Trump to submit all plans for the jumbo jet donation to Congress in compliance with the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

"The Constitution charges Congress with ensuring the President does not use the highest office in the land as a get-rich-quick scheme to pocket lavish gifts from foreign Presidents ... It is high time that Congress do its job," said Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Trump has defended the gift as a way to save tax dollars. "Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars when they can get it for FREE," he said on social media.

However, Senator Tammy Duckworth said that "Far from saving money, this unconstitutional action will not only cost our nation its dignity, but it will force taxpayers to waste over 1 billion in taxpayer dollars to overhaul this particular aircraft when we currently have not one, but two fully operational and fully capable Air Force One aircraft."

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on Tuesday that he did not know why people thought of the gift as a bribe or "something that Qatar wants to buy and influence with this administration. I don't see any, honestly, a valid reason for that."

"The plane story is a ministry of defense to department of defense transaction, which is basically done in full transparency and very legally, and it's part of the cooperation that we've been always doing together for decades," he said.

COSTLY UPGRADE AHEAD

Air Force One is commonly used to denote U.S. Air Force aircraft modified and used to transport the president. They are equipped with advanced secure communications equipment, allowing the aircraft to function as a mobile command center in the event of an attack on the United States, according to the White House.

The two Boeing planes currently serving as Air Force One have been in operation since 1990. During his first term, Trump signed a 3.9-billion-dollar deal with Boeing to customize two new Boeing 747-8 planes to become the next generation of Air Force One.

The Trump administration had tried to push Boeing to move faster on them, but Air Force officials were projecting that it would now be 2027, at the earliest, before the first of the two new planes would be ready for Trump, said a report by The New York Times.

Soon after Trump took office for his second term, military officials started to discuss how the United States could buy a temporary plane for him to use while Boeing's work creaked along, an investigation by The New York Times found.

The Boeing 747 gift came just in time. However, experts argue that it will take years to fit with additional security systems and upgrades required to carry the president, including the ability to withstand an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear blast, and to refuel mid-flight.

Aviation experts told NBC News that accepting the 13-year-old jet would likely cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars over time, noting that refurbishing the commercial plane would exceed its current value of 400 million dollars.

Installing the new systems could push the project into the 2030s, said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst and consultant on commercial and military aviation, who added that equipping the plane with midair refueling capability alone would be "enormously time-consuming."

The idea made no financial or practical sense, given that Boeing is already deep into a multi-year effort to convert two 747s to replace the current Air Force One planes, NBC News reported, citing experts.